Every morning, James Kimbrough walks around his 13-unit apartment building to pick up any garbage tossed on the property. He is sure to wear heavy work gloves, because it’s likely the trash will include used syringes.
Kimbrough, 68, has nothing to do with the heroin business, but like many Chicagoans, he must live with the consequences. In his neighborhood, he and other residents say, hazardous litter is just the start.
Dealers take over playgrounds, forcing children to stay away. Customers, many of them clearly from the suburbs, weave their cars through the narrow streets after getting a fix. And some of Kimbrough’s tenants get addicted and stop paying rent, forcing him to go through lengthy and expensive eviction proceedings.
“You wouldn’t want to bring one of those drug-sniffing dogs around here,” he said. “That dog would go crazy.”
He is baffled by how the drug trade can be conducted so brazenly in his neighborhood, and by what he sees as the legal system’s intolerable leniency. Judges who let dealers and buyers skirt jail, he said, should be forced to live on a street ruled by narcotics.
His neighbors share his frustration. At a recent meeting Kimbrough hosted at his building, they talked about addicts gathering so thickly outside one house that its owner had nowhere to park his car. They complained about the tiny baggies they find stamped with images — skulls and crossbones, cats, ducks — that denote the “brand” of heroin within.
Dorothy Williams, 52, said that a few weeks ago she saw a man plunge a needle into his forearm as he sat in his car, apparently unfazed by the thought that someone might be watching.
“You have that going on in broad daylight,” she said. “It’s as bad as I’ve seen it anytime, anywhere.”
